Downloading music and faking Pokemon cards to sell is different too. One starves a company/artist of profit because you essentially stole the song as opposed to buying it. The other starves the company/artist/rightful owners of the real copies of profit in that the person who faked the cards is diluting the market, selling and profiting from the merchandise he “stole” / illegaly created.
It’s more close to downloading a video that is in theaters and giving showings of it in your own theaters for cheaper price. You are potentially taking customers away from the true owners of the illustrator, and in the case of faking a more common card you could be taking customers directly away from The Pokemon Company.
I think that @missingno was going more along the lines of at least he isn’t straight up claiming it’s real, whilst he is still doing something wrong in MY opinion, you at least have to give the guy a bit of respect as he clearly isn’t trying to pass them off as real like many other people would.
I get where you guys are coming from, but we aren’t going to justify illegally forgeries on this site.
To better help understand this situation, there was an individual who tried listing fake illustrators during worlds, the Pokemon staff were made aware of it, one of them called ebay, and it was removed immediately.
Outside of the fact that this is straight up illegal, if the seller is making them and selling them, there is absolutely no defending this act whatsoever. Trying to justify this as being less illegal by suggesting, “they say it is fake” is comparable to saying, “at least the guy who robbed the bank said he was robbing the bank”.
Also, there was a reputable individual who lost a good chunk of their collection, was banned from ebay, because a scammer sold them a fake prerelease Raichu. Sure, one seller may tell you it is real, you have no guarantee what occurs after the card is sold to someone else.
The bottom line, this is illegal. If someone came here with this garbage or any other reputable collecting site (sports or non-sports) they would be instantly permabanned.